FIRST CALL

The growth has returned to the Indian smartphone market. The largest ever quarterly growth after COVID19 comes as a morale booster for the market and the buyers. Indian smartphone has risen by 9 percent on year-on-year basis in Q3 2020 as compared to the same quarter last year. The smartphone shipments have touched 53 million units in this quarter. The boom in the work-from-home or anywhere culture and online education during the lockdown have pushed the limits even higher for smartphone utilisation at homes. The credit mainly goes to the online channels for immense popularisation of the sales period during October. They had started ordering and stocking inventories during August-september phase which has led to this huge surge in numbers.

Meanwhile, in the race, Samsung and Xiaomi are neck-to-neck in market share, followed by vivo, realme and Oppo. Also in the manufacturing, government is keen on increasing the local value addition for self-reliance. Mobile handset production is likely to increase in the coming days as schemes like Production Linked Incentive (PLI) start to impact the overall electronic manufacturing ecosystem. Indian brands like Micromax and Lava are expected to leverage the government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative and plan their comeback. You will see LAVA and Micromax launching their smartphones this month.

On the contrary, Apple had already unveiled its 12th generation smartphones; iphone 12 mini, iphone 12, iphone 12 Pro and iphone 12 Pro Max. Continuing its efforts to provide a simple yet holistic smartphone experience Apple has upgraded its smartphones to meet the 5G boom in days to come. In a major policy decision, Apple has decided to cut the charger and the earphone from the iphone boxes going forward. The trillion dollar company aims to be Carbon-neutral by 2030 by this ‘bold’ move. The Us-based global giant also aims to increase the capacity utilization by 70 percent of the iphone consignments, globally. We hope that this move proves out beneficial for the environment and Apple alike.

As the celebration has returned to the smartphone market, we hope and wish this to transpire into your lives like the light of Diwali. We are on the recovery path and aims to do better than this where we are today. Wish my esteemed readers and well-wishers a very happy and prosperous Diwali.

Happy Reading! ■

Pankaj Mohindroo EDITOR-IN-CHIEF